Was in Vegas for 4 days - Oct 21-24th with a friend whose brothers joined us for part of the trip. Stayed at MGM on a good package deal from Southwest Vacations.

Started out Saturday with the Sahara 11am tournament. Played ok, but got knocked out midway. Proceeded to make back the buy-in +100 playing 1-2NL. After that I was exhausted due to a very early morning flight into Vegas.

After a nap, went down for the evening to play some 1-2NL at MGM. Didn't get great starting cards, but hit 2pair and a few sets to do quite well. Play was really pretty soft, with quite a few people bluffing at pots. Pretty easy to do well playing tight. I think this was my most productive 1-2NL session ever - up about $550 after about 3 hours of play.

Sunday we stopped by a sports book early to check out some sports betting action and then after some discussion decided to play the Caeser's noon tournament. Played well and made it to the final table as a shorter stack. Managed to negotiate a chop where all but the top 2 got $599 and the 2 big stacks split the rest. The tax cap definitely helped in getting everyone to agree to the chop, and 1st/2nd ended up with almost the same amount as if they played it out, so they were ok with it.

Sunday night saw Le Reve after dinner at the Venetian. Show was excellent. Even though it is not officially a Cirque show (it was created by someone who left Cirque after being involved with O), it is on par with any of their shows.

Monday rocked. Played the morning Sahara tournament with 2 other guys, one of which was a relative poker newbie. The 3 of us made the final 5, unfortunately taking 3rd-5th since we chose not to chop thinking we would do better. The last of us got knocked out on a pretty bad beat. Slow playing AA, flop was 4-4-10, and the big stack moved in with a 10 and was called by my friend's AA. Turn was a 10, and that was that. Still, all three of us cashing was great. During this tourney they also started announcing the change in initial starting chips (2000->3000) and increased rebuy chips (1500->2000) making this an even better tourney. So we stuck around and played in the evening tourney as well. I finished 10th, in the money, making it 3/4 cashes in tourneys. Definitely the best low buy-in tourney in Vegas.

After that tourney through leaving I was mostly card dead with a short, thrilling exception. At MGM played for about an hour and didn't win a hand, but was playing tight and was only down $60 when I decided to go to sleep. Started with the $60 plus $100 Tuesday morning also at MGM. Play was very loose/aggressive (and obnoxious) on one end of the table and tight on my end. Saw one of the wild guys go from about $1400 to $300 while I was there. My short good burst started with flopping quad 4's (pocket 4's), and having 1 person go all-in before me, and 2 of the wild callers after me. Nice $500 pot. I got up to over $600 within a few hands and then luck went away. Lost my last hand when I had j9 in the BB. Called a wild player's $15 raise to be heads up. Flop was 5-7-9 w/ 2 diamonds. I bet out $30 and he raised to $100, starting his talk about how he really hit the flop. I thought he was full of it, and after a few minutes came over the top all-in for another $100. He immediately called and flipped up his cards thinking he had the straight, only to find he had 7-8, for middle pair and an inside straight draw. But he hit runner-runner for a backdoor flush. Oh well. First really bad beat I took all weekend.

Still ended up over $700 after all the tourney entries, food, etc, so more than payed for the trip. I still love the Sahara and Caeser's tournaments and there is a lot of loose 1-2NL action.